Review of Ernest May, Knowing One’s Enemies

Ernest May, ed., Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986)

Author(s): Ernest May was an American historian and academic, best known for his long-serving tenure at Harvard and his focus on American foreign policy and international affairs. He is a Navy vet of the Korean War, and was a senior advisor on the 9/11 commission report and passed away in 2009.

Chapters contributed by Norman Stone, Holger H. Herwig, William C. Fuller, Jr., Christopher Andrew, Jan Karl Tanenbaum, Paul M. Kennedy, John Gooch, Donald Cameron Watt, Robert J. Young, Michael Geyer, MacGregor Knox, John Erickson, Michael A. Barnhart, Peter Lowe, and David Kahn.

Synopsis: An edited volume that describes how several great powers gauged one another. The book analyzed both collection AND assessment. The book includes three parts, part one details First World War Intelligence, Part Two is the Second World War in Western Europe while Part Three concerns the Second World War in Eastern Europe and beyond. Each chapter discusses how these major governments gained knowledge of other powers, the processes by which they collected and analyzed that information, and how that intelligence was used in governmental decisions. Each chapter deals not only with intelligence agencies, but also the decision makers who used that intelligence. This volume includes chapters from Christopher Andrew and Jan Karl Tanenbaum on French and German intelligence during the lead up to World War I and describe why the French were so surprised in 1914. Further chapters describe Italian actions in the Abyssinian crisis of 1934, British intelligence operations in the lead up to World War II—including why Neville Chamberlain made many of the decisions that he did—among many other fascinating stories and tidbits of history.

Central Argument: Governments prior to World War I were at their worst estimating capabilities. Governments of the 1930s made their greatest errors when judging proclivities.

In the conclusion, May lists some generalities that tie the book and the work of intelligence together. (532–540)

1. The type of organization does not have any major effect on the quality of assessment and changing organizational type is more detrimental than sticking with it.
2. All intelligence agencies performed poorly in making long-term projections but were better at short-term predictions—especially military warning.
3. Governments generally failed to see things from the standpoint of other governments.
4. Governments failed to pause over the questions “who is the potential enemy?” and “who are we?”
5. (And most importantly according to May) Widely accepted presumptions were often quite wrong because they were often not questioned or challenged.

Historiography: Contains the classic intelligence historians lament that two thirds of this book could not have been written ten year previous because only then had government archives begun to open.